Category: Theories

Is SEO dead? As the founder of a leading Los Angeles search engine optimization agency, I seem to be hearing this question on almost a daily basis as of late. The hysteria surrounds Google’s so-called “Hummingbird” algorithm update, which implemented some dramatic changes to the ways in which websites are ranked. Just recently, Forbes added a bit fuel to the already growing fire with their viral headline, The Aftermath of SEO’s Death This Summer. So should we be worried? Or is this just more smoke?

Forbes Did Get One Thing Right

First, let me put your mind at ease. SEO most certainly is not dead. The rules are changing, yes, but it’s highly deceptive for Forbes (or for any analyst) to suggest that this is something new. SEO is constantly changing, and savvy SEO experts are constantly modifying their methods accordingly. For instance, take a look at this quote from the Forbes article:

These new algorithms mean no more hat tricks, keyword stuffing, comment spamming, backlink image stuffing and the list goes on.

Okay, fair enough. Just one problem: most of the SEO tricks on this list have been ineffective since 2008 or earlier. In fact, some of these items are completely black hat (expressly forbidden under Google’s Terms of Service), which makes me question whether the author of the Forbes article is really educated on the subject of SEO.

The best SEO companies have long understood the paramount importance of creating meaningful, relevant content and building high-quality links organically. Nothing about this is new, despite the Forbes insinuation that the party’s over for SEO. Any SEO company that engages in keyword stuffing, comment spamming or any other tricks intended to purposefully and deceptively manipulate the search engines has been failing its clients for years. And you can bet that those clients have the poor rankings to show for it.

To be fair, the Forbes article doesn’t conclude that SEO is in fact “dead” (despite the misleading headline), and it does make some excellent points about how content is king. The author’s biggest error is in suggesting that this is some profound new revelation. If you want to achieve search engine superiority, there are no shortcuts. You need an SEO plan that fully emphasizes the user experience.

My Los Angeles search engine optimization agency, Coalition Technologies, excels in user-based SEO. That’s how we have been doing it for years, and our clients are thriving as a result. There are no black hat tricks, no deceptions and no games. If you’re looking for a real, solid SEO plan that conforms to the needs of the changing search engine landscape, give us a call for a free quote at 1-888-800-9101.

Outsourcing can be enormously powerful for either an organization or an individual. I personally use Elance.com to outsource my copywriting, certain types of programming, and even business needs. Elance is basically Ebay for services… You post a project that needs to be done and various providers bid to offer you their services. You then choose the best bid and put your money into an escrow account and wait for the project to be delivered.

A short list of examples of outsourced work:

Scheduling assistant to call people

Research to find 1,000 blogs in a target industry

100 500-word articles for a website

Accounting work

Basic bookkeeping

Programming in any language you can imagine

Translation in most spoken/written languages

School work

Legal work

Public relations campaigns

… and many other types of jobs. The limits are only your own creativity.

Had drinks with an old friend, Rachelle, yesterday. We met at Barca on Capitol Hill for a martini and a talk about her writing and “epic dreams”. Later we moved to Quinn’s and feasted on frog’s legs and salad. My Bloody Mary was not a good idea in combination with the spiciness of the toad’s hindquarters, but trying new things isn’t always a blast. Found out later that another friend who sorta stood me up actually was at Quinn’s at the same time. Odd coincidence.

Four Questions:

How can the military-industrial complex be stopped without sacrificing security?

Should I write a novel and post it to my blog?

Skinny or muscly?

As the future King of America, what policies would you advise I enact?

My second shot at Swiss Cheese Potato Casserole ended up being rather richer than intended.‚ The casserole is actually more of a very tasty dessert.‚ A very manly dessert.‚ A single small bowl is enough to satiate my behemoth appetite.

Not much is sweeter than making money while I sleep.

Will Barack Obama’s popular policy proposal to change college football from the current BCS format to a playoff system become reality?‚ If so, how long will it take? How many Texas/USC fans will gnash their teeth till then?

Other than a sincere hatred of Microsoft, is there any reason to focus on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) technologies rather than the ASP.NET architecture?

The refrigerator in my apartment has been harboring a lonely Budweiser Clamato beer for over two months now.‚ No one wants to give it love.‚ Can you be that person?

The title of this post is a diirect quote from Martin Fridson, the leading expert on junk bonds, speaking of financial firms and buyout companies.

I hate being right.

The private equity kings and warlords who for the past decade have been making monster paychecks are suddenly seeing their investments sink. The Titanic was a rubber raft compared to what’s happening to these guys. Blackstone, KKR and others are seeing their buyouts, which were financed by cheap credit, suddenly change into multi-billion dollar losses. I actually think that a lot of these private equity guys saw this coming ahead of time, which is why they went public with their companies last year. The kings of finance saw the warning signs and got their money out of the investments and now everyone who was too slow, too optimistic, or too stupid to do the same is about to get slapped in the face by a boulder.

In the last few days, the stock market has dropped toit’s lowest point in two years. Word on the street is that there is a bigtime Wall Street bank about to be in deep, deep doo-doo. Blackstone’s earnings have crashed 89% in the last three months and there is no sight of bottom.

First, the subprime market crashed. Then the credit market for corporations completely froze up. Now private equity banks are gazing into the eyes of death. Companies that have been purchased by the private equity banks have their loans and junk bonds trading at rates so ridiculous that investors are obviously betting that they will go bankrupt. Many of these businesses, while still current on their debt, have investors trading it at 70 cents on the dollar- investors think there is a very good chance the companies won’t pay.

Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and the Lehman Brothers are currently holding $130 billion dollars in leveraged loans supporting their private equity deals… and a lot of that money could be worthless. This is just symptomatic of the larger market right now- things are looking very dreary indeed. Even the chairmen of the major Fed banks have been making statements that, coming from them, sound like a desperate plea to avoid the falling axe.

The president of Blackstone, Hamilton James, has publicly stated that “Our view is that things will get worse before they get better”.

Our economy has many strong signs of trouble ahead: rising fuel prices, energy and water shortages, massive debt load, financial markets that are drying up and slowing consumer spending. My recommendation to everyone out there is to prepare for the worst.

For a long time now, I have thought that I solved many of my problems during sleep and during college I firmly held the theory that extra sleep the night before a test was more valuable to me getting a good score than was extra study time. Now proof is coming out that my theory wasn’t based just on laziness, but on facts.

During REM sleep, humans break down their memories and analyze them and put them together in different ways to help us gain a better understanding of the big picture. When I am facing an especially difficult problem, I go to sleep and by morning I have several very good solutions. It’s amazing. And now I can show the science behind why it is true and disprove you superstitious folk who insist that anything you don’t understand was done by a god.

I think that we are about to see another dramatic shift in the way business works. Wal-Mart changed the way most of America purchased it’s products a couple of decades ago from having to go to lots of smaller stores to purchase pricey goods, to going to one giant supplier to get most goods at low prices.

Right now, there are tens of thousands of small ecommerce websites and a few larger ones. I think that over the next five years we are going to see a massive shake up with a few monster websites that best manage logistics taking over most sales business done online and greatly expanding the amount of people who purchase items online. The most efficient shipping companies stand to benefit from this- FedEx or even Wal-Mart’s supply chains are the most obvious immediate beneficiaries. Invest in them.